Prioritizing Tasks for the New Year

Hereit is, the new year, and I bet you will soon list a bunch of goals and to-dosfor 2022. Not a bad idea!

Butthis year, I encourage you to get realistic about how you set theirpriorities. There are right ways and wrong ways to prioritize to-dos. Do itwrong, and the list won’t get done—it will just be another bust on your newyear’s resolutions.

Yoursuccess will be significantly higher if you use MYN and 1MTD principles to prioritize that list.

First:Limit Your High Priorities

Thefirst error is putting too many items into the high-priority section. Iunderstand why we do it—we’re all loaded with important to-dos.

Butthe problem is, if everything is a high priority, then nothing is!

BothMYN and 1MTD solve that by limiting the visible critical list to 5 itemsmaximum. And in MYN you schedule and hide many items to a later date whenyou’ll have more bandwidth. Consider doing the same with portions of your NewYear’s list.

Next:Limit Use of Deadlines

Thesecond error is to put deadlines on too many tasks. Some people even adda deadline to every task, and that’s wrong!

Itotally understand why we do this—we think a date commitment will help usfocus. 

Butoverusing deadlines leads to too many tasks having fake deadlines. And thatleads to us losing respect for the deadlines we write down—we just skip themwhen the deadline arrives.

BothMYN and 1MTD have built-in approaches that solve that.

UseUrgency Zones

Themain approach is using urgency zones to classify tasks in both MYN and1MTD. These zones have distinct timeframes built in. For example, the CriticalNow zone is for tasks that you must do today. The Opportunity Now zone holdstasks you’d like to do soon—either today or in the next ten daysor so. And the Over-the-Horizon zone stores tasks that can wait quite a while.

Usingthese urgency zones, you avoid putting deadlines on most tasks. Rather, yousimply sort tasks into these zones using managed approaches—and task timeframesare now defined.

Butof course, some tasks do have true deadlines—indicate them if so. But don’tmake up deadlines just to pace your work. Rather, use start dates to dothat.

UseStart Dates

InMYN we assign start dates to all tasks. Doing that defines whenyou want to consider starting a task. Start dates allow you to hide tasks tothe future. It’s a fantastic way to time-pace your work without creating falsedeadlines. And it keeps the list you examine daily pared down in size.

To use start dates effectively, however, you’ll need to advance from the simple 1MTD system to the more advanced MYN system.

StartManaging Your Tasks this Year

Thesefeatures (and many more) of 1MTD and MYN offer proven methods of focus. Theyprevent your list from becoming bloated and discouraging yet provide the toolsyou need to manage a long list of tasks—and to complete them over time.

So, when you create your list for 2022, create it in either a 1MTD or MYN to-do list. By doing that, you really will complete your goals this year.